Voldemort does seem like a very 70s sort of villain.

But it wasn't until disco that he showed his power.

Finally, an explanation for disco.

I just re-read the Epilogue, and it never refers to Ginny as Harry's wife, just as the kids' mother. Just something for the slashfic minded of us.

Aw hell, I missed the cover art discussion. Crappity.

FWIW, I prefer the American covers over most everything I've seen, though I think the covers for OotP & HBP are really dreary.

Now, if you want to talk really bad, here's the Italian cover to book 1 - [link]

Well, I do have one set of covers that I think are better than the American ones, it's just that I've never been able to see the images at anything much larger than a couple of inches high. These would be the wonderful covers done by Alvaro Tapia for the Swedish editions - [link]

I kind of like the Italian ones, but those Finnish ones kick butt. I notice after the Icelandic Zombie-Harry cover they went to the American covers.

I just re-read the Epilogue, and it never refers to Ginny as Harry's wife, just as the kids' mother. Just something for the slashfic minded of us.

Or anyone who wants to write a story where Mrs. Weasly never. fucking. speaks. to. Harry. Potter. ev. er. a. gain.

Clearly you don't want to get on Mrs. Weasly's bad side at all for any reason: I mean she was more than a match for the mad Ms. Lestrange, wasn't she? I think we can be quite sure Harry did right by dear Ginny.

I think we can be quite sure Harry did right by dear Ginny.

That's a great basis for a marriage, fear of your MIL.

I've finished the book!

It took me two weeks, a fast (I couldn't start the book before or during it), a sister's wedding (why, yes, the preparations in the book, and the crazy morning-of-wedding seem pretty much the same, magic or no magic), a weekend-full-of-guests (so I prevented myself from even opening the book, in order to not create a situation in which I disappear inside it completely), a missed bus due to reading at the station (Or, well, it could be that the bus was simply very late and not that I was so lost inside Ron and the sword and the locket to raise my eyes and see what's going on), roommates rolling their eyes at me, hiding from the internet in safe havens where I knew for sure I wouldn't be spoiled, and finally a peaceful weekend in which I could just sit and read and cry my heart out over several scenes.

And now, my head is spinning, and I'm supposed to work, but I kinda need to try and unentangle my thoughts, even if they are so stating-the-obvious and it-was-obvious-to-everybody-else-but-me. So I'm skipping (and threadsucking! And going to catch up!), and throwing large paragraphs at screens, OK?

I remember how, in the former book, I was all about reflections and triangles, but in this book, I shifted my geometry a bit, because it's so much more about spirals and circles. But still, of course, reflections.

It's silly, but even the riddle that they were asked when wanting to get into Ravenclaw tower, was about just that, a circle. Or rather, the answer to the riddle (what came first, the phoenix or the flames) was a circle, without a beginning or an end, returning to the same points, only a bit differently.

I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is nothing profound or deep or character-searching or whatever, but practically a rather technical detail: using Voldemort's name. In the "Philosophers' Stone", Harry uses his name, without knowing that it's dangerous. He's being told, over and over again, to stop that, and in its end (IIRC) Dumbledore tells him not to stop using that name, with all the meaning that it has - knowing your enemy's name, daring to use it, not fearing the myth surrounding it. And all throughout the books, Harry does just that.

And then, in "Deathly Hallows", the pronunciation of the name itself becomes dangerous. This is how they're tracked when they run away for the first time, this is how they're captured by the Snatchers and brought to the Malfoy house. The name has a real immediate danger attached to it now. Things moved from the realm of myth and fear-inspiring to actual actions, to actual captures and results. And for the same reason for using the name as Harry's, too.

But then, at the end of the book, when there's nothing to lose, because things are already pretty much as bad as they could be and there's no revealing in the actual pronunciation of the name, they return to their habit of saying it out loud. When the fight is out and at the open, even when the opponent is at his strongest position yet (or maybe because of that?), the name returns to its former place, loses that special power again (even with the added power it now has).

And it goes further than that. When Harry duels with him, one last time, he's using not only the name that Voldemort had chosen for himself, but also the name that practically nobody but Dumbledore has ever used when referring to him, Tom Riddle. His human name, his not-Lord-ish name, the human part he tried to leave behind, to change and distort. That little crying child in the King's Cross that's in Harry's head. And that was a simple name that had no magical power or spell attached to it. But that was the thing that held the most power over Voldemort, in a way. Because of the power that he gave to it, himself.

But, no, wait, I'm running forwards too quickly. I'm still just at the very beginning of the book, not already at the end, when it comes to those circles, and there are already so many of them. I mean, the whole scene of leaving the Dursleys for the last time was such a lovely circle closed with Harry first arriving there, almost sixteen years earlier, as a baby.

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First of all, of course, the way he arrived and left - the motorcycle (Sirius's), driven by Hagrid. He was but a helpless baby, unable to do anything but being loved by his parents, pretty much, and surviving thanks to all that, when he first arrived, a little bundle in Hagrid's huge hands. When he left, he had so many friends with him, he has learned so much, had done already so much, but he didn't leave on a broom, like the celebrated Seeker that he was, or on a thestral, which he was one of the few who could see, suffering loss of loved ones in front of his eyes. He left just like he has arrived, in Hagrid's protection, inside Sirius's motorcycle. Still protected by that same love.

And even losing Hedwig (which was, and I'm probably the seventeenth-thousand person to point that out, the point in which I thought that all the bets are off, and JKR is really serious about taking this book to wherever she wanted to, whatever the price), even this fit into that circle. When he first left the Dursleys with Hagrid, it was just the both of them. Hagrid got him Hedwig at Diagon Alley, right? So when leaving for he last time, it's again just the two of them. All the circumstances around them are so completely different, of course, which is sort of what I meant by "spiral", the circle doesn't close at the same point it had begun, but still.

And so many plot points, both significant as well as less so, were carried away from former books! I mean, even the duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald was already mentioned in "Philosopher's Stone", in the chocolate frog card describing Dumbledore, in the same card that contained the information on Flamel that Harry, Ron and Hermione were searching for most of that book. It had not just one important point, but two. And it wasn't just important plot-wise, but also meaning-wise, with death being the next stage in life, and adventure in and of itself, not just the thing to fear from and try to run away from, as Voldemort saw it. Flamel chose death, and was pretty much the first to show that, way before any Hallows were part of the game.

Oh, and Gringotts, of course. The first visit to Diagon Alley had Harry there, with a breaking-in (that failed), a goblin and a treasure that only those who knew about its existence knew that it was so. This time, with the addition of a dragon (though not named Norbert), the very same goblin (though from the complete opposite side), and a success in attempting to rob the place. How would the 11-years-old Harry have opened his eyes in amazement, had he known what he himself would have done at that same place.

And even stuff like the ghosts, which seemed to only be there for fun and for making Hogwarts seem cooler and messier, had their place, plot-wise as well as meaning-wise, in this closing of the circle. The Bloody Baron's bloodiness was finally explained, their connection to Hogwarts and why they haunted that specific place (and not gone over, just like Sirius, and Harry even used those same words regarding Dumbledore, too, in this book!), and even how they could fit it all to the story.

And it was lovely, in my eyes, because just like the ghosts, and Dumbledore's wand, and the diadem that everybody thought had been lost, all these things have been right there, *right there* all along, sometimes while some of the characters were desperately looking for them, waiting to be discovered, to have meaning thrust into them and the people behaving accordingly. Pretty much like Flamel's name in the very first book, like Scabbers in "Prisoner of Azkaban".

I practically jumped when they mentioned the diadem in the Room of Requirement, because I remembered Harry using those old bits-and-ends in order to point at the place he hid his book. He and Dumbledore were looking so desperately for Horcruxes at the time, right then, and he had one in his hand, and never even realized that. That same blind stop that Voldemort had, that Dumbledore admitted at having, was there for Harry, too. Nobody cal escape their own weaknesses and blind spots? I guess. But still, when it mattered, it wasn't overlooked for being old and musty. It wasn't considered to be this great beautiful sparkling thing. It was found, where it was waiting.

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